Criminal Justice Reform

Comparative Criminal Justice Research

Professor of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University

Key Findings

Impediments to comparative research include lack of funding, access to confidential government data, language barriers, and publishing in notable journals.

Ways to support comparative research include institutionalizing the field, creating comparative courses into core curriculum in university programs, and publishing comparative studies in all subject areas.

Description

In the article, “Comparative Criminological and Criminal Justice Research and the Data that Drive Them,” Bennett examines the development of comparative research and whether or not it has been successful. Comparative research uses the four dimensions of research (approach, scope, data, and design) to better understand the subject matter; see how the field advances; and implement practices based on successful strategies. Official data, research data collected by criminal justice agencies that is uniform across countries, is the most commonly used data type as it is readily available. Another data type, survey data, which relies on participants responding to translated questionnaires for data, is useful to understanding victimization on an individual level. Survey data is difficult to track over time and hard to accurately cover a sample population. Finally, there are individual data collection activities, where the only requirement is including data from three or more nations on a specific topic. Impediments to comparative research include lack of funding, access to confidential government data, language barriers, and publishing in notable journals. The future of comparative research relies on institutionalizing the field, creating comparative courses into core curriculum in university programs as well as including publishing comparative studies in all subject areas.